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Apple Removes Christian App

Lauren Leigh Noske Jun 04, 2013 02:02 AM EDT

Apple recently removed a Christ-centered application from its iTunes store that included a course for helping people overcome homosexual practice. The app was developed by Mike Cleveland’s Setting Captives Free ministry, and offers help with battling habitual sins such as drug and alcohol abuse, gluttony, gambling, sexual impurity, eating disorders, and homosexuality.

Gay-rights activists protested that the application was “harmful” to those practicing homosexuality, claiming that the people who do so were not in need of a "gay cure app." They petitioned Apple and Google, arguing that they are "promoting dangerous hate" by allowing this product in their stores and that the application violates the companies' discrimination policies.

Setting Captives Free testifies that the grace of God in Christ has helped hundreds of thousands of people overcome habitual sin through their ministry. Cleveland started the organization after he "finally began to seek help and learned the Biblical solution to his sin problem: repentance, forgiveness, and the newness of life that comes through the gospel."

Door of Hope, the course that offers help with overcoming homosexual practice, highlights the woman at the well in the Gospel of John: "Jesus said to her, 'Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life'" (English Standard Version, John 4:13-14). Setting Captives Free notes that "Jesus offered this woman living water. He said that if she drank it, she would not be thirsty anymore; in other words, she would be satisfied and not desire one relationship after another."

Says one supporter of the ministry, "Thank you for this app - a lot of Christians can be blessed and set free from all strongholds and walk in freedom through God's grace ... with tools like this. Glory to God. Bless all those who can't see clearly what this app is really about."

The Android version of the Setting Captives Free application is still available for download.

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